Côte d'Ivoire
Rice Market Reform

The challenge facing reforms in Côte d'Ivoire is to balance efforts to encourage increased and efficient private participation with the need for facilitating and complementing roles the state can play in reducing transaction costs, shaping a proper legal environment, promoting competition and transparency, and easing the transition process for the hitherto lightly protected domestic sector. Managing the reform process and improving its efficiency, therefore, necessitates a good understanding of:

1. the operation of local markets,
2. the strategies and response of private marketing agents,
3. the impact on small farmers decisions with respect to marketed surplus and input demand, and
4. how private sector responses relate to changes in the institutional and policy environment of markets.

Accordingly, the present project seeks to document the process of rice market reforms and the adjustment within the trading and farming sector in order to identify strategies to complete the transition to private-sector-based, competitive, and efficient output distribution and input delivery systems in the rice sector.

For further information please contact: Markets and Structural Studies Division, IFPRI, 2033 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., 20006, U.S.A.